When you'd rather spend more time selling than searching for
products, it's time to consider more reliable sources of
merchandise.
No one can deny the thrill of posting a garage-sale find or
department-store clearance item on eBay and snagging 10 times what
you paid for it or more. But you have to put up with the
feast-or-famine nature of sourcing your business this way. Now that
you know how eBay works, you're ready to take on the bigger
deals and larger volumes that will produce a steady stream of
product and establish you as a reliable seller among eBay
shoppers.
Wholesale distributors, liquidators, closeout distributors and
job-lot traders offer a virtually unlimited choice of product,
though quality and quantity will vary. For access to these
suppliers, you'll need a state resale number, which allows you
to buy wholesale anywhere in the country. Manufacturers and
wholesalers may also set minimum orders, so you must first decide
how much merchandise you can afford to buy and store.
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Some wholesale distributors and manufacturers avoid internet
businesses because they consider them unstable or unprofitable. But
according to Chris Malta, CEO of Worldwide Brands
Inc., a product sourcing research publisher in Orlando,
Florida, there is a subset of suppliers that tailor their
businesses to online sellers such as those on eBay. These
"light bulk" wholesalers, as Worldwide Brands refers to
them, offer minimum orders of $500 or less.
Locating a wholesale distributor who supplies what you want to
sell isn't always easy, but Sun W. Kim, 30, founder of TekGems Inc. (eBay
User ID: tekgems), found a novel way to do it. The San Francisco
electronics entrepreneur did Google searches for the model numbers
of products he wanted--searches that often led right to
distributors' websites. "Pretty soon, I knew who the
distributors were and whom to talk to," Kim says.
Now, it seems the manufacturers find him, using the same
technique to check on their products. "I probably have a
supplier or manufacturer interested in selling me something once a
week," Kim says.
Marsha Collier, an eBay PowerSeller and author of several books
about eBay, recommends eBay itself as a product source. Using
search terms such as lot, case quantity, surplus or pallet, sellers
can find liquidated merchandise and closeouts from providers too
busy to sell the products individually. Liquidation.com is also a
popular source for finding these goods.
Buying from liquidators offers a significant price benefit, but
you never know what you'll get. "You'll find good
bargains," Malta says, "but you can also end up with
items taken from breakage piles."
Whom you buy from also depends on what you want to sell. Avoid
product categories where oversupply has dropped prices too low to
provide a profit. Asad Haroon, general manager of GoWholesale.com, a
Washington, DC-based search portal for the wholesale and
small-business sectors, recommends buying merchandise related to a
hot item. Instead of adding to the glut of cell phones, for
example, sell cell-phone plates or car adapters. "You may not
have as big a demand," Haroon says, "but there won't
be a lot of other people selling [them]."
Whatever you sell, opt for items that will maintain your
interest in the business. "If you hate the items you're
selling," Collier says, "you're really going to be
bored."